Town Square

The tsunami online

Original post made
on Oct 26, 2012

As surely as it crashed over the publishing and music industries, the Internet is inexorably remaking the world of education. Stanford University President John Hennessy has likened the latest wave of online education -- from simple video lectures to entire degrees earned online -- to a tsunami. ==B Related stories:==
' [Web Link The disrupters -- or the amplifiers?]
' [Web Link The enthusiasts]
' [Web Link Online education's local incubator]

Posted by Mark
a resident of Palo Alto Hills
on Oct 26, 2012 at 12:56 pm

What is mentioned above regarding cost and quality of courses given online is true, but the students will not have the college environment experience, which is a significant part of going to college. We will have a generation that will lack the face to face experience, such traits are needed in negotiations of different kinds of subjects from purchasing a vehicle to negotiations between politicians.

Posted by Ducatigirl
a resident of Old Palo Alto
on Oct 26, 2012 at 1:30 pmDucatigirl is a registered user.

Anything that lowers the outrageous cost of a college education has my vote.

I think this is one of only five countries in the world that doesn't provide a free college education to qualified students. These days, a graduate degree is a necessity, especially for all the professions in new technologies and sciences.

It borders on criminal that medical doctors leave med school with millions of dollars in student loans. In Mexico, if a student qualifies to get into med school, the government pays for it. The trade-off is that he graduate must work ina hospital for the poor, at minimum wage, for two years. And Mexico is a Third World Country!

The situation we have with overpaid college administrators, who increase tuition twice a year and then give themselves raises, is not sustainable. Let the internet eliminate these financially burdensome people.

Posted by skeptic
a resident of Professorville
on Oct 26, 2012 at 5:40 pm

And as the internet eliminates financially burdensome people (is that how you view the teaching community...be careful as that finger may point at you sooner than you think YOU TOO will be replaced by technology). And what will we do with all those people who did not study CS and programming? What jobs will be left for the many? Digging, no robots will take care of that. Watch out where technology goes...we are eliminating our usefulness as human beings.

Posted by Wondering?
a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on Oct 26, 2012 at 7:16 pm

> These days, a graduate degree is a necessity, especially for
> all the professions in new technologies and sciences.

It's certainly a necessity to get hired, but is it a necessity to do the job you are hired for? Maybe in engineering and some of the sciences, but what about the other disciplines? What good is a BA in English, or history, or gender studies?

Posted by Ducatigirl
a resident of Old Palo Alto
on Oct 26, 2012 at 10:44 pmDucatigirl is a registered user.

It is sad that this is how it is, but everything I read about the jobs of the future indicate that it is so. Unfortunatelyu, guys like Zuckerberg, Gates, and Jobs make it look like that is not the case. But they are certainly the exceptions, not the rule.

My nephew thinks he will be the next Tim Lincecum, which is possible, but highly improbable, and his parents aren't betting the mortgage on it, wisely.